A symbolic Revolution

The desire for a free and self-determined lifestyle is additionally often complicated by the necessity of securing jobs in precarious working conditions. The essentially free and empathetic intention of cultural work is subjected to the regime of a capitalist mode of production, as Karl Marx had already formulated for the capitalist economy as a whole. In the field of cultural work, too, the dynamics of overproduction and underconsumption lead to an excessive waste of resources and lifetime. Only the illusion of cultural workers that their often long years of hard work will eventually be rewarded with appropriate success distracts from the reality that only a very small minority can actually make a living from art. The vast majority keep their heads above water in dependent relationships and, depending on their partnership or family background, will eventually face poverty in old age.

Michael Hirsch addresses this phenomenon, which we are all latently aware of and often lament, with an illuminating analysis that focuses on the systemic problems on the one hand and the approach of cultural workers on the other. It is time to stop equating the spectrum of cultural activities with ‘normal’ work and thus establishing a false norm. With the current image of professionalism, which is based on a fusion with the business world, a false goal is being pursued unnoticed.

In his book, Michael Hirsch advocates ‘progressive disillusionment’ and thus liberation from the compulsion to be useful, connected and exploited. He uses the metaphor of a donkey with a device tied to its back, dangling a carrot in front of its nose at an unattainable distance, which it cannot reach as long as it runs after it. The point is to pause and stop chasing the carrot of false expectations set by the establishment. Instead, a process of awareness could begin, starting with a change in professional self-image based on a repressive system of false expectations.

The more precarious the conditions, the tougher the demands for professionalisation. To counter this dynamic intellectually, Michael Hirsch introduces the concept of ‘professional amateurs’ to the concept of ‘progressive disillusionment’. In doing so, he addresses the current situation of actors in the cultural sector, whose lives are rarely reduced to a more or less happy relationship with the market. Artistic practices are integrated into the process of different working environments through side jobs and work with institutions, which means that the image of professionalism cannot be reduced exclusively to the sale of art. As countless experience reports have shown, the lives of most cultural workers consist of a combination of different activities, which should generate a completely different image of professionalism than is currently the case. With the concept of professional amateurs, Hirsch attempts to free the false professionalisation of intellectual work from the context of competition and shameful dependencies and adapt it to real life.

Each chapter of his book is supplemented with a quote from different writers, revealing a wealth of insights that could lead to a reinterpretation of the intrinsic value of cultural work and thus to a different assessment of professionalism. In the words of Jaques Rancière, "the precariousness of artists is not the same as the bohemianism of the nineteenth century. It is something completely different, insofar as artists also work on social conditions and are the bearers of social struggles."

The current crisis, which, due to the pandemic, has only brought to the surface the problems of the cultural sector that already existed before, would be an opportunity for political reform. Not only must resources and opportunities be redistributed, but this redistribution must also inevitably be accompanied by a revaluation of professional ethics. As long as we criticise the system but continue as before, no fundamental change in institutional systems can be achieved. The idea of success and redemption, which suggests that everything is actually fine if you manage to get a permanent position, a prize or the next scholarship, must be demystified, as the moment of redemption is an illusion for the vast majority. The rare upward mobility in an artistic biography, which is supposed to secure one's livelihood, is in reality the concrete social support of state aid, artists' social security funds, family or social environment. Michael Hirsch encourages us to collectively rethink the problem of lack of recognition and personal disappointment and to develop a new narrative.

In order to develop the concrete utopia of cultural and intellectual work, Michael Hirsch proposes ‘more class consciousness, more political education, representation of interests and action – as well as more romanticism, more mythology of the artist and the intellectual as the prototype of a liberated human being.’ A call to speak and desire more in one's own name than from the demands of the professional field, through which part of the reality of life must be constantly negated in order to withstand competition. This heightened class consciousness arises from an understanding of the constitutive division of identity that results from the fact that cultural workers, through wage labour, belong on the one hand to the proletariat of society and on the other to a bohemian class that produces utility values whose value could increase but which may also remain worthless in monetary terms. In order to counter the contradiction that arises from the desire for artistic and intellectual activity free from wage labour, Hirsch advocates becoming more aware of the dialectic and revising expectations and hopes in order to transform the constitutive impossibility of this form of life and work into a new artistic way of life.

To do this, many illusions must be abandoned and shameful, often concealed issues must be discussed, such as the money we actually live on and what future working conditions would have to look like in order to provide basic material security. Beyond the aid programmes during the coronavirus crisis, which have shown how little the state understands the reality of life for self-employed artists and cultural workers, as they are not among the self-employed high earners but predominantly have incomes that correspond to a basic social security level at most, special emergency aid and protective rights should apply to the milieu of cultural workers. Similar to agriculture, where it is not simply a matter of producing profitable goods, but also of protecting a special ecology, environment and cultural landscape. In order to protect the cultural milieu and preserve it for society, special material rights should apply, which could be implemented in the form of minimum wages, a basic income and a basic pension. To this end, a more equitable distribution of social labour and jobs could be introduced, as well as a right to affordable housing and free use of public infrastructure.

Michael Hirsch's book is permeated with thoughts of solidarity, expressed not only in his remarks on a possible and appropriate improvement of the welfare state, but also in his encouragement of a new honesty among cultural workers, who play a key role in creating a new understanding of the intrinsic value of their milieu.

The symbolic revolution begins with not chasing after the carrot anymore, but with concluding a new social contract. According to Michael Hirsch, this contract involves not only working together on a social post-growth perspective, which is just as necessary in the cultural sector as it is in the normal economy, in order to distribute wages and wealth more fairly. In order to reduce overproduction in cultural life, a new story must also be told, one that corresponds to real life and to the attempts of so many, who have long been striving for symbolic independence in a state of material dependence.

Michael Hirsch

K – Cultural Work

Progressive Disillusionment and Professional Amateurs

Published in 2022 by Textem Verlag

Michael Hirsch is a philosopher, political scientist, art theorist and author. He works as a private lecturer in political theory at the University of Siegen.